Tag Archives: democrats

Political Rants

Playing (and losing) at the same old game

There was an old saying among politicos in Albany, according to noted New York State Government scholar and CEO of WAMC public radio Alan Chartock. It went something like this: “Don’t break the other guy’s rice bowl.” (I always felt there was some element of latent racism in this saying – why a rice bowl? – but let’s set that aside for a moment.)

This is, in essence, the principle of you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. A legislator will not attack the pet project or campaign funding source of another, and therefore can rely on the same deference from their counterparts. While Chartock’s example is specific to New York politics, it applied at a national level as well, to some extent, and I think the Democratic leadership still plays by these types of rules. Trouble is, their opponents have changed, and they have not changed their tactics in response.

No Justice, No Peace

Honestly, I sometimes have to slap myself across the face to be certain I’m not having some weird, surrealistic dream. The leadership of the Republican party attempted a coup d’etat at the beginning of this year, and the Democrats are treating it like it’s some run-of-the-mill corruption issue. Let me say that again: TRUMP AND THE REPUBLICANS TRIED TO OVERTHROW THE CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT, and thus far NO PLOT LEADER HAS BEEN HELD ACCOUNTABLE.

This is not business as usual. Whatever you think of the U.S. government (and I have plenty of criticism for it), the degree to which we have an elected government is a function of the Constitution, and that was very nearly set aside. Trump was actively lobbying state governments to throw out the legitimate results of the 2020 election. He sent an army of thugs into the Capitol to stop the tabulation of the electoral vote and take revenge on the clueless vice president. Again, this is NOT the usual shit.

Proud to be an authoritarian

This all wouldn’t be so bad if it were confined to just a cabal of nutcase politicians and hangers-on. The problem we have, though, is that propaganda works very well. All of that blather about supposed fraud risks associated with mail-in voting has convinced a large number of Americans that the last election was stolen. They are not the majority, but there are enough of them to ensure that the next insurrection will be successful.

Some of these people are truly out of their minds. I mean, we’ve all heard about the Q-anon types who gathered in Dallas last week, anticipating the arrival of John F. Kennedy Jr. They are part of a broader death cult that fantasizes about overthrowing the government, installing Trump as a dictator, and executing people associated with the Democratic party, shooting them in the streets. That’s a pretty dark vision to be shared so broadly.

Who you going to call?

The thing is, the police are doing practically nothing about these people. Some of them are even threatening election officials with murder, torture, you name it, and the cops are AWOL. The FBI is making noises, but little else. They are under very little pressure from Democratic office-holders to hold people like this accountable. It’s obvious that law enforcement do not see these people as a threat. It’s up to our elected officials to change their minds about that. We need to urge them to do so, before these authoritarians act on their warped fantasies.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Voting the bums in for the last time.

Okay, so the “For the People” act did not overcome the filibuster this past week. That was no surprise, of course. Neither was the fact that Republican senators made no effort to specify exactly why they thought the provisions of the act would negatively affect Republicans. They speak in billboards, these people – short, snappy phrases like “power grab” and “stop the steal,” with no key as to what the hell they’re talking about.

But let’s be clear: in statehouses across the country, GOP legislatures and governors are putting the mechanisms in place to commandeer the next election, regardless of who gets the most votes. The “For the People” act would have rolled much of those back. Without some restraint from the Federal level, it’s going to be very difficult for poorer and disenfranchised people to access the ballot in coming elections.

Nothing new under the gun

Republicans have been working on this stuff for a long time. They’ve been pushing voter i.d. laws, rolling back early voting, and resisting policies like automatic voter registration for decades. During the Bush II administration, they even fired a bunch of U.S. Attorneys for not aggressively prosecuting voter fraud cases (which, frankly, were practically non-existent even then). The reason is simple: the more people vote, the more they tend to lose because their stated policies are so deeply unpopular.

Also, they have long tended to appeal to their constituents’ baser instincts – namely, fear of immigrants, fear and hatred of dark people more generally, fear of crime, etc. Democrats have resorted to this as well, but less so over time as white people have become a proportionately smaller part of the electorate. (Many of them do accommodate the views of their Republican colleagues, of course.)

GOP election strategy: one and done

There is, however, a difference in kind, not degree, about the current “conservative” movement. Now they truly seem determined not only to steal elections via legal and extralegal means, but to set themselves up so that they permanently remain in power. Trump is not what I would call a “thought leader” on the right, but he does have utter contempt for rules, restrictions, and institutions, and I think he deployed this to supercharge the autocratic tendencies in the Republican party, which now seems enamored with his erratic, dictatorial behavior.

Readers of this blog will know that I had my doubts last year over whether Trump would leave office if he lost the election. Based on what we know he and his cohorts attempted to do, I think that sentiment was justified. In all honesty, if Trump or some Trump clone runs for president in 2024, I think there’s a better than good chance that, with the support of these GOP legislators and governors, that candidate will be named the winner. And once they pull that off, staying permanently becomes that much easier.

Keith was kinda right

At the beginning of Trump’s term, Keith Olbermann put out a series of videos attacking him as a usurper, a criminal, and an autocrat. While I think the Russia, Russia, Russia stuff was way overblown, he was kind of right about Trump’s congeniality towards the idea of ruling like a freaking King Rat. I, for one, will not underestimate the danger of autocracy again, and I strongly suggest that you take the same precaution.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Richer and poorer.

This was a week when the Senate saw fit to go home for a long weekend while enhanced jobless benefits expired along with a ban on evictions for federally supported renters. It was also a week when the richest dude on the planet, along with the heads of other monopolistic tech firms, testified in front of a House subcommittee. I realize the focus of this hearing was antitrust, and that is a more-than-worthy enterprise, but I had hoped for at least one exchange that would go something like this:

Congressmember: Mr. Bezos, how much money do you have?
Bezos: What time is it? 11:25 a.m.? Uhhhh … $153 billion.
Congressmember: Don’t you think that’s too much?
Bezos: Excuse me?
Congressmember: Nobody needs anywhere near that much money, Mr. Bezos. Why don’t you leave more of it on the table? Why does so much of it end up with you? That seems like a really strong sign that something’s drastically wrong with the way you run your business. What you need is stronger workplace regulation and confiscatory taxation. I yield back my time.

Yeah, that didn’t happen. Not surprised.

For the Senate’s part, they appear to have rediscovered their concern about deficits, perhaps because they’re anticipating a loss in the upcoming election. Best restart the national debt scare talk now so it doesn’t seem as contrived in January. Still, it kind of amazes me that at a time when we have more people out of a job than we did at the height of the Great Depression – and we got there in a matter of weeks – Mitch and the boys are getting cold feet about spending federal dollars to pump the tires up a bit. Expect this to return to an obsession level policy if there’s a Biden administration next January, and expect plenty of the never Trumpers to be right on board.

It’s not surprising that the Senate Republicans (and most of the Democrats) act in the best interests of their constituents – rich people. There was a time, though, when they tried a little harder to conceal it. Maybe they think it doesn’t have an electoral impact. Maybe with the extremist gerrymandering they accomplished in 2010 and all the voter suppression laws they’ve put in place since article five of the Voting Rights Act was struck down – maybe with all that, they feel they can still pull it out. Well, maybe they’re right, but we’ll see. I kind of think their tactics are optimized for an economic circumstance that’s significantly less toxic than the current state of affairs. Many of the top-tier Democrats still act like it’s the 1990s; I think this is true of the Republicans as well. It’s just possible that their callous disregard for the voting public may well bite them on the ass … hard.

There haven’t been this many people down and out since the 1930s. And the people who aren’t feeling it now will feel it soon enough. That simple fact makes the politics of this moment very unpredictable.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.